People who bought this also bought...

Roughing It

In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a tenderfoot in the Wild West. Roughing It is a hilarious record of his travels over a six-year period that comes to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales. Twain reflects on his scuffling years mining silver in Nevada, working at a Virginia City newspaper, being downandout in San Francisco, reporting for a newspaper from Hawaii, and more.

The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone, here, for the first time, is Mark Twain’s uncensored autobiography, in its entirety, exactly as he left it. This major literary event offers the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain’s authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave, as he intended.

Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race

Irreverent, charming, and eminently quotable, this handbook - an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race - contains 69 aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain’s private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars.

The Humorous Short Stories of Mark Twain

The master storyteller amuses and entertains with a collection of stories which includes: "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg", "The Double Barrelled Detective Story", "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", "The Million Dollar Bank Note", "Benton and Mills", "A Tale", "Cannibalism in the Cars", "The Stolen White Elephant", "The Man Who Put Up at Gadsby's", "The Good Little Boy", "The Bad Little Boy", and "Baker's Blue Jay Yarn".

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3

When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist's life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life's work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.

Letters from the Earth

Here we see Twain on a somewhat personal level. Penniless and having just lost his wife and one of his children, Twain turns to writing about God, Christianity, and the many curious natures of man. This collection was so controversial that his daughter prohibited its publication until 52 years after his death.

A Tramp Abroad

In April 1878, Mark Twain and his family traveled to Europe. Overloaded with creative ideas, Twain had hoped that the sojourn would spark his creativity enough to bring at least one of the books in his head to fruition. Instead, he wrote of his walking tour of Europe, describing his impressions of the Black Forest, the Matterhorn, and other attractions. Neglected for years, A Tramp Abroad sparkles with Twain’s shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

With his trademark mirth and boundless charisma, actor Nick Offerman brought the loveable shenanigans of Twain's adolescent hero to life in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Now, in yet another virtuosic performance, the actor proves that despite being separated by a span of over a century, his connection to the author and his work is undeniable and that theirs is a timeless collaboration that should not be missed.

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2

Mark Twain's complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant best seller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author's death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain's career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions. The eagerly awaited second volume delves deeper into Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds.

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc's life and her accomplishments, as seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, are described with irony and brilliant insight into human nature. This was Twain's last book and he considered it to be his best.

The Short Stories, Volume I

This definitive audio collection, read by Stacy Keach, traces the development and maturation of Hemingway's distinct and revolutionary storytelling style - from the plain bald language of his first story to his mastery of seamless prose that contained a spare, eloquent pathos, as well as a sense of expansive solitude. These stories showcase the singular talent of a master, the most important American writer of the 20th century.

The Innocents Abroad: Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress

In June 1867, Mark Twain set out for Europe and the Holy Land on the paddle steamer Quaker City. His enduring, no-nonsense guide for the first-time traveler also served as an antidote to the insufferably romantic travel books of the period.

Life on the Mississippi [Blackstone]

The Mississippi River, known as “America’s River” and Mark Twain are practically synonymous in American culture. The popularity of Twain’s steamboat and steamboat pilot on the ever-changing Mississippi has endured for over a century. A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A natural storyteller and raconteur in his own right - just listen to Paddle Your Own Canoe and Gumption - actor, comedian, carpenter, and all-around manly man Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) brings his distinctive baritone and a fine-tuned comic versatility to Twain's writing. In a knockout performance, he doesn't so much as read Twain's words as he does rejoice in them, delighting in the hijinks of Tom - whom he lovingly refers to as a "great scam artist" and "true American hero".

Eighteen of the very best American short stories, each a classic in its own right. Stories include "The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots", by George Pope Morris; "The Angel of the Odd", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Schoolmasters’s Progress", by Caroline M.S. Kirkland; "The Watkinson Evening", by Eliza Leslie; "Titbottom’s Spectacles", by George William Curtis; "My Double and "How He Undid Me", by Edward Everett Hale; "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters", by Oliver Wendell; and more.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Audio Collection, Vol. 1

Gothic master Edgar Allan Poe's complete works are collected in this multivolume set by Blackstone Audio. Here are his short stories, detective fiction, and poems in all their mysterious and macabre glory. Also included are Poe's literary reviews and editorial musings, comprising an often caustic analysis of the poetry, drama, and fiction of the period.

Publisher's Summary

Mark Twain's writing has been wildly popular ever since he put pen to paper, and now its popularity has continued into the new century.

Mark Twain was well known as a great American short-story writer as well as a novelist and humorist. This collection of eighteen of his best short stories, the well known and the lesser known, displays his best-known side, as a master of Western humor and frontier realism, with little of the pessimism that surfaced in his later works.

Beginning the collection is "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," which was Twain's first successful story, published in 1865 in the New York Saturday Press. This comic version of an old folk tale became the title story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, published in 1867, which was what established him as a leading American humorist.

Twain's most distinctive work sums up the tradition of Western humor and frontier realism. Beginning as a journalist, he assumed the method and point of view of popular literature in the U.S., maintaining the personal anecdotal style that he also used in his comic lectures.

These stories display Twain's place in American letters as a master writer in the authentic native idiom. He was exuberant and irreverent, but underlying the humor was a vigorous desire for social justice and a pervasive equalitarian attitude.

(P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What the Critics Say

Mark Twain was a master of "pungent tall talk and picaresque adventure." (The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature)

Robin Field gives a great reading of some of Mark Twain's best stories. His narration is a little flat in the beginning, but when he gets into the voices of the many characters, he takes off.

The audiobook appears to be based on the Modern Library edition of the same title: it has the same stories in the same order, including the date of publication; and my only complaint is that the last four stories from that collection, all from Twain's darker period, are omitted. (This may have been an issue of length, but I suspect it's more a question of copyright.) The omitted stories include "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" and the haunting and unfinished story "The Great Dark." Luckily most of the omitted material is available in other Mark Twain recordings on Audible.com. (For example, "The Great Dark" is available as part of the "Letters From the Earth" audiobook, which I also recommend.)

So the collection isn't as complete as it could be, but as far as it goes, it's first-rate. It includes the usual suspects (the Jumping Frog and Hadleyburg) and one of my own personal favorites, "The Stolen White Elephant," one of the most laugh-out-loud-funny parodies of detective fiction ever written. If you're just getting into Twain, this is a good place to start.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain to be better than the print version?

Twain is good in either format, but this audio is very well done.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain?

My teenage son and I enjoyed the two stories of the boys who turned out differently than might be predicted by their behaviour, especially when the bad boy "all of a sudden wasn't taken over by a terrible feeling of guilt."

What does Robin Field bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I enjoyed the narrator, who provided a hint of the accent so that Twain's "twang" of the late 19th century American west and midwest comes through.